Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Programme - year 2: process and impact evaluation - summary report

Introduction

The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2021-2022 committed to investing £500 million in Whole Family Wellbeing Funding^[1] (WFWF) over the course of the current parliament (2022-2026).

In 2020, the Independent Care Review (The Care Review, 2020a), a review of Scotland’s ‘care system’ for children and young people, indicated that a significant upscale of family support was required. The Scottish Government accepted the 80 recommendations set out in the Independent Care Review in full, and made a promise to Scotland's children and young people that they would grow up loved, safe and respected. The commitment to The Promise was set out alongside the Plan 21-24^[2] (The Care Review, 2020b; The Promise Scotland, 2021), which outlined how change must happen, and made whole family support a priority. Part of the response to the Plan, set out in the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2021-2022, was the commitment to invest in the WFWF (Scottish Government, 2021).

WFWF aims to create local system changes, mainly through Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs), to provide families with the right support at the right time for as long as needed. This aim of WFWF was part of a wider goal to reduce the need for crisis intervention in families, and to shift investment towards prevention and early intervention (see Glossary in Annex 3 of the full report). The funding emphasised the delivery of support for child mental health, poverty, alcohol and drug misuse and educational attainment.

To deliver this, WFWF involves:

• Funding provided to CSPPs to build local service capacity for change and to transform family support services. Each CSPP is responsible for deciding how to spend its allocation, based on a local assessment of need. This part of the funding is known as Element 1 of the WFWF.
• Scottish Government developing and sharing learning across CSPPs and locally applying a systematic approach to change (the Quality Improvement Journey). This includes Collaborative Partnerships between a Scottish Government-led transformation team and a small number of CSPPs, and the Learning into Action Network, a knowledge exchange and collaboration network. This part of the funding is known as Element 2 of the WFWF.
• Funding for 12 Scottish Government-led national policy projects delivered across local areas to help progress the aims of the Programme (see Annex 2 of the full report). This part of the funding is known as Element 3 of the WFWF.

The WFWF Programme is structured around four ‘core components’ of holistic family support (set out by Scottish Government in the Routemap and National Principles, Scottish Government, 2022). These core components are availability and access; families at the centre of design; whole systems approach; and leadership, workforce and culture. The Programme’s activities align to these core components and are intended to contribute to the early and intermediate outcomes identified within the WFWF logic model (see Annex 4 of the full report). A total of 16 outcomes were assessed in this Year 2 evaluation.

In September 2024, the Scottish Government published a WFWF Investment Approach as part of The Promise Progress Update (Scottish Government, 2024a). The update highlighted the substantial progress that local WFWF activities had made up to that date, though it noted that more time was needed to create lasting change. The update announced the extension of WFWF beyond 2026, without setting a new end date. The aim of this extension was to enable CSPPs to make evidence-based decisions about continuing to enhance early intervention and preventative care, support long-term sustainability and maintain flexibility in funding within a changing delivery context. The Scottish Government will also consider whether new funding streams are required to address the immediate systems issue of an increase of families in crisis. This includes whether additional funding should be provided to some individual CSPP areas to support their next phase of transformational change over time.

This evaluation of the WFWF Programme has assessed how CSPPs continued to use their WFWF allocation in the second year of delivery and the extent of achievement of the Programme’s outcomes. The evaluation also identified the enablers and barriers to achieving these outcomes. This and future evaluations will contribute to developing an evidence base for CSPPs, The Scottish Government and other stakeholders to further progress and adapt their work within the remaining (and newly extended) period of the WFWF Programme.